


SSSSugoi

by Curry



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-16 12:17:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3487976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curry/pseuds/Curry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A kind of alternate timeline branching off from right before Chapter 6 ends. I hope to capture a similar feel to the comic with lots of inter-character interactions and exploration because that's what I love about this comic! Possibly slightly graphic descriptions of the trolls (nothing worse than is in the comic, I hope?) and a couple of bodies, but nothing sexual, and instances of foul language are few and far between. Braidy is included (his personality is estimated to the best of my abilities) and the (three) original characters are not shipped with any canon characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Emil is Unnerved, As Usual

Something about this place was different. There was a certain aura of… well, not quite troll, they had gotten used to that by this point, but something equally as dangerous and life-threatening. Even Sigrun had gotten slightly unnerved by the way the well-polished, almost new doors had slid open when they approached. Emil never thought there could be people living outside of Scandinavia, never even considered the option, but seeing just how sparklingly clean and smooth the hallway made him wonder. Would they be friendly? He couldn’t imagine they would, especially not with how dangerous the trolls were. Anybody left would undoubtedly be harsh and feral.

However, the halls remained empty, lights flickering low with the energy of nobody’s failing mind. It wasn’t a very cheery place. Mikkel stayed behind, waiting with Tuuri for the hopeful return with tons of books, more cash to line their pockets. It was just them. Emil, Lalli, and Sigrun, walking in the hallway that seemingly was only getting narrower, closing in around them, but that could have been only an illusion created by the lights getting fewer and farther in between. They continued on, the only sounds being the slight in and out of his breathing over the quiet taps of their footsteps on linoleum. There wasn’t a speck of dust, not even a hint of a nest, but that made it worse somehow. At least he wouldn’t be thrown up on, covered in blood, or tossed around in the stomach of a troll (that was one wild library), and his hair probably wouldn’t suffer anything here, but it was creepy and he wasn’t going to deny it.

With a start he realized that he couldn’t see any more and he was just following the dim light of Sigrun’s lantern around the form of her figure in the darkness. His suspicions about the diminishing size of the hallway were brought back to mind as one shoulder grazes the wall, then the other. He takes a deep breath and continues moving, reaching out with his fingers to confirm the claustrophobic truth that yes, it is smaller, and when he reaches up to feel the ceiling he realizes that it’s not going to be much longer before he has to start bending over. Being the widest in the group, he’s not surprised that it was he who noticed first, but it doesn’t mean it’s not something he shouldn’t ask about, right?

“What on earth is up with this hallway?” Nailed it, Emil. Belligerence will cover up your nervousness.

Lalli stays silent, probably not understanding a word of Emil’s Swedish. Emil had been teaching him a couple words, but earth and hallway weren’t in his lexicon yet, unless his weird mage powers allowed him to pick up languages without trying. It could happen. He doesn’t talk enough to truly tell if he speaks any languages well, anyways.

Sigrun takes a while to respond. It’s not like her to hesitate about anything, and that immediately makes him a thousand times more nervous. If she doesn’t know what’s up, then nobody here knows what’s up, and Lalli can’t communicate outside of sign language (which is currently invisible in the low light of her lantern, which also seems to be running out of oil in a remarkable case of bad timing) so nobody can really understand anybody.

“It’s getting smaller. I’m pretty sure people used to do this before the rash, as some sort of fashion statement or something. Anyways-“ she turns around, the influx of light momentarily blinding him- “it’s a dead end, so we should probably head back! I bet this is the wrong address!”

“Wha- okay?” Emil scoots uncomfortably, shoulders smushed against the side of the wall. He turns sideways and immediately elbows Lalli in what he assumes to be the stomach. Lalli makes a feline disgruntled sound and Emil can almost see the confused and irritated expression he’s come to know very, very well. Negative five friend points, again. Unsure of how to communicate the change in direction he squeezes one arm out from behind him and grabs Lalli’s shoulder, trying to flip him around, but then suddenly there’s a slow ominous creak from right behind what seems to be Sigrun and a long strip of blue, pulsing light opens up at their feet, growing larger until they’re all bathed in the cool glow.

Everyone freezes.

About a minute passes. There’s a low hum in the background that feels like it’s flickering, too.

The silence is broken by Sigrun’s laughter. Emil jumps and Lalli hisses again. Oops, probably grabbed his shoulder too hard. Emil sheepishly lets go as Sigrun talks.

“Maybe not! Geez, whoever made this place sure has no sense of function. I’m glad we’re smarter than that, right? Our buildings are much nicer. No low ceilings at my house- ow.” she says, a hollow thunk from the ceiling echoing through the narrow passage. It’s times like this that Emil is glad he’s not very tall. “Time to go look for some books!” Glee at imminent strife is obvious in her voice.

“Yay, time to turn around, again.” Emil uncomfortably twists and shimmies, slamming a limb against the cold wall at least three times. Lalli waits unexcitedly behind him. As long as he’s not freaking out, then everything is alright, right? Sigrun has already gone through the tiny door (how did she manage that? she’s like, seven feet tall) and was out of immediate sight, but he could still see the redder light of her lantern off to the left side. He somehow manages to pass through the door, grenades catching on the frame, and finds himself in a much larger space, with chairs and tables and even a dead potted plant. There’s a can with a spoon still in it, label in some language Emil doesn’t know, and next to it is an overturned mug with some kind of packet still inside it. Lalli is flipping through some magazine with a picture of a cat on the outside. There are a stack of them in the corner in some kind of rack. They don’t notice the faint outline of a human body on the wall behind the chair.

Emil hesitantly follows Sigrun’s vanishing figure down another hall, Lalli probably still inspecting all the varieties of cats. He’s wearing a thick jacket but he can still feel the temperature drop as he walks. Soon he can see his breath in small puffs of condensed water in the air. It’s not like it bothers him, but it doesn’t help his comfort levels. There is no obvious source for the dim light but it’s still there, ever-present, just like the background hum which seems to be getting louder.

He turns around a sharp bend and comes upon Sigrun staring at a closed door, fingers tapping her chin as she stares at it.

“I just poked around this. Doesn’t it look like there’s something important behind it? Maybe a valuable book collection. Something interesting, for sure.” She beckons him over, and Emil moves beside her, looking it up and down. It seems almost seamless and there isn’t much to indicate that it’s in fact a door, apart from a small slit at the floor with more, brighter blue light flowing through it. He bends down to try and look through and he notices the humming sound gets a lot louder, almost to the point of hurting his ears.

“Uh, Sigrun, I know I’m always getting kind of freaked out, but this is really-“ He doesn’t finish his sentence before the door jerks into motion right by his head, collapsing in on itself and folding into the ceiling. A whoosh of trapped air rushed past him, and it’s much colder, colder even than the winters back at his house. The sudden motion shoots adrenaline through his veins and he freezes, again, peering into the sudden brightness of the room. It feels like his blood drops to the temperature of the room as they both stand still, silent, waiting to see if there was anybody there. The air is so cold. It hurts his lungs to breathe and he really wants to run away, run away faster than he ever has before, go back to the catbus and just try somewhere else, but of course Sigrun ruins it by calling for Lalli. “Hei! Lalli!” Her voice echoes throughout the room that’s evidently much larger than he expected. There seem to be rows upon rows of something, something with tons of tubes and meters and dials festering all over it like the boils on the first troll he ever saw.

He hopes Lalli won’t come, that Lalli will somehow convince Sigrun to not go into this room that every inch of his being is commanding him to stay away from. He nervously fixes his hair. Just be glad it’s not full of troll teeth this time. It’s too clean and sleek here to be any sort of nest for sure. There’s not a speck of dust, and there hasn’t been any sort of trace of humanity apart from where the mug was- wait a second, is that a flashlight in the corner? It looks like a burn spot on the floor right next to it as well. The ashes are scattered in a long line leading to the right, through a gap in the lines of frozen casks. They’re subtle enough to have not been noticed if somebody wasn’t on the ground, like he was, but now that he noticed them he can’t stop staring at them, staring at the faint impressions of combat boots ground in black into the floor.

Emil’s hopes are dashed to pieces by Lalli’s soft steps appearing behind him. He doesn’t hear him until his feet are right by his face, actually, the hum having escalated to a cacophony of buzzes and beeps when the door opened. Apparently it was soundproofed.

Sigrun, not being one for waiting, immediately hoists Emil up and onto his feet, grabbing the back of his sizeable collar and forcing him to look straight ahead. He’s not prepared for this. He really wasn’t prepared for this. She lets go and walks forward, unwittingly going the way that the ashes trail off into, and Emil shudders on the inside. “Sigrun, those are ashes, I vote we don’t go that way.” Lalli ignores him and follows right behind Sigrun.

“Nonsense! Ashes mean books!”

“What- Sigrun, that doesn’t-“ he stops and she’s already gone. Good job, Emil, you just let her walk all over you again. Lalli is soon gone as well. This is the fifth time he’s been left all alone. Every single time he has been the one to find the first troll and while he’s gotten better about not screaming, his methods of dealing with said trolls leave a lot to be wanted in the subtlety area.

He considers sitting down and just waiting for them to come back and get him. It’s probably better than blowing the whole place up, again, and he actually does sit down on the ground and try to be patient, leaning on the door as far away from the right side as possible.

It only takes him five minutes to get incredibly, painfully bored. His fingers feel like they’re freezing off, and he’s pretty sure that his ears are turning purple. Maybe he should look inside the machines. He’s never seen anything like them before, and they almost seem alive when he looks at them. The humming is getting to him and as he slowly draws closer to the opaque bubble of glass embedded in the mass of tubes and metals it seems to infiltrate his brain, making it flatline just like the constant sound in the background. It gets warmer as he gets closer. He can feel the warmth through his glove when he places a hand on the glass, wiping away the slight layer of grime that’s built up over the miscellaneous amount of years they’ve been stored untouched. Except... No, Emil wouldn’t think about the ashes, they were out of sight and out of mind.

Emil first realizes there’s some sort of liquid inside. It looks bluish but that could just be the color of the light. There was some scientific equation for reflection of color on water that he learned a long time ago, but that, like the ashes, was out of sight, and far out of mind.

Emil second realizes that the liquid is in fact blue and that the lights are actually inside the cask. There are two strips of six, and he can’t quite see them through the slightly opaque fluid, but he instinctively knows that they’re the source of the light, like a moth to a flame.

Emil third realizes that there’s a mouthpiece, kind of a mask, floating around in the water. It’s got one side attached to a kind of divot, a join, and it seems like there is another but it’s broken off and floating around. Every now and then a couple of bubbles float out of it.

Emil fourth realizes that there’s a skull and some disconnected bones at the bottom of the tank.

Emil jerks away from the scientific apparatus and falls back down in his attempt to get away. The rectangular screen under the circular embedded piece with the corpse still has lots of numbers counting down under it. He last realizes that there are joints and panels in the glass, and that they must retract kind of like the door from before would. He backs away. No way in hell is he letting that open up. Last thing he needs is more dead person goop. No thanks, not today.

He promptly gets up and walks to the left, not even bothering to worry about Sigrun and Lalli. All he’s thinking is that he should get as far away from that body as he can. He doesn’t even get more than 10 yards past the door when one of the machines emits a loud, troll-waking-up type of gurgle.

True to his training, he stops in place, considering whether he should actually look or not. It seems like everything only goes wrong when he actually makes eye contact (or looking-at-general-facial-area contact) with the troll so he spends a good portion of time considering it, one leg still halfway up in the air where he froze midstride. His hand moves slowly to grasp for his own flashlight before he realizes that oops, he broke it last time they were looking for books. Emil decides he should really stop using light sources as weapons in lieu of actual knives.

It gurgles again and he takes a deep breath, scrunching up his eyes in an effort to prolong the time between now and battle. Ever so slowly he turns around, finally placing his foot on the ground now that he’s facing the thrumming machine, walking forward to be within arm’s reach as quietly as he can.

He reaches out an arm and once his fingers brush against the warm glass. It’s still dry and slick and clean-feeling. That means it’s unlikely to be a troll. A sigh of relief escapes his lips. Not a nest. Not a troll. Not anything that’s going to hurt him.

He opens his eyes, a tiny complacent smile returning to his face, only to be quickly replaced by a look of terror as he realizes there is a fully-grown troll inside the cask, its limbs and tumors having grown as large as they can while being limited to the size of the comparatively tiny glass sphere. He can see its heart beating against the glass. Its eyes and face are pressed against the glass, flesh having grown too large for comfort, and it blinks, staring at him almost hungrily. What’s left of its mouth curves up in a smile, and Emil realizes that the mouth has just extended down its neck and split up its nose and chin and he’s running away again back towards Sigrun and he really doesn’t know what is up with this place but he does not want to be a part of it and they should leave right now. He comes back to the door and almost automatically runs down it before he realizes that he should warn the others, and he’s sprinting again, fueled by fear and adrenaline.

He comes up on the flashlight in the pile of ashes and stops short. He can’t un-notice the distinct trail. Now looking up again, he notices that the globe nearest it is open and cracked, with the mask hanging off of one strap as before. It did retract like he thought it would and there’s a large opening, big enough that even he could climb through it, made by the top and bottom panels retracting up and down and the middle four panels sliding to the sides. There’s a blue stain on the outside of the glass. He guesses that’s probably the evaporated liquid from inside. He makes a mental note to not get it on him because it looks like it would stain. The dials all seem to be broken as well. Every single one of the hands is hanging down, limply, and the lights in the back of the egg-shaped part are off and shattered. Looking back down he sees burn marks on the floor and on the bottom of the apparatus, on one of the tubes, and also on the timer (currently out of time at 000:00:00:00:00:00) in the vague shape of a handprint.

Okay.

He blinks a couple times and convinces himself that it’s not a handprint, just some acid or something dropped on the machine. Acid can do that. He forcefully modifies his vague memory of chemistry in school to include that in its properties.

He tries to walk on, ignoring the ashes strewn on the floor, handprints- no, not handprints, acid marks- all over the floor and grasping the corners of the machines as if trying to pull itself along with only its hands. He almost succeeds in his willful ignorance until there’s a break in the machines. Another passageway, he thinks. Lalli probably went that way. Actually… He realizes the ashes actually go that way. Sigrun would have gone over there. Ashes mean books. He suppresses a small giggle at her logic and then he sees the corpse.


	2. In Which Lalli Has No Social Skills

Lalli had given up on trying with Emil. Emil always ended up hitting him or punching him or squeezing his shoulder too hard and Lalli really doesn’t understand why.

That’s why, when Emil hesitated when Sigrun started off, Lalli immediately took the opposite way and tried to get as far away from the heavy-handed Swede as possible. It wasn’t that he didn’t like him, per se, it’s just Lalli prefers to be on his own when he’s exploring, and he’s always been conditioned to be alone when he’s scouting. Lalli is so wrapped up in avoiding people that he doesn’t pay attention to the charred torso he hops over, doesn’t pay attention to the obvious claw marks in some of the tubes, doesn’t pay attention to the gigantic, troll-sized dent in the side of one of the machines. None of them are recent of this to trip his troll-finding instincts although there is a lingering aura of hate and fear around the crater. That’s pretty much par for the course as far as troll emotions go, but considering how long it’s been, it’s almost remarkable that they’re still hanging around.

Lalli shrugs it off and stops jogging a good while in. He feels like he might be around the center of the room, but looking up, he can’t see the ceiling, or any of the walls anymore. It just fades to dark blue when he tries to look closer.

Something moves in one of the contraptions and he trots over to it, casually peering inside. There’s a person with incredibly long, wavy hair floating around their head in kind of a halo, and their arms are delicately folded across their naked chest, legs pulled up to their shoulders in a fetal position, but the angelic expression of peace is marred by a black mask strapped onto the face. The lights behind them dim and brighten with Lalli’s heartbeat.

He sticks his tongue out at the sleeping figure and walks on more slowly. As he looks inside more of the orbs he realizes there are many more trolls and corpses than people. The troll nearest to him seems almost helpless, with its neck overgrown and extended to the point that its head is forced back, jaw flattened against the curve of the glass, but the helplessness implied by the position of the face is belied by his next sight. Its distended stomach seems almost like it’s growing into the tubes, and then he sees that yes, it did grow through them and into the next person’s circle.

It almost looks like somebody had dumped a bucket of chum into the blue liquid. Most of the blood had settled to the bottom, but pieces of flesh and bone are still routinely stirred up by the waving of the troll’s third arm, which seems to have formed in the tube off of what was originally a rib.

Lalli’s not sure. He never learned biology. It’s not his job to analyze the formation of trolls, either, he just has to kill- well, technically free- them.

He only now notices the freezing air. It defies logic, getting colder the closer he gets to one of the machines then suddenly heating up once he’s within an inch. Granted, Lalli doesn’t have a background in science, so it doesn’t bother him too much.

He pulls his fur collar closer to his ears, moving on and ignoring the multitudes of trolls that leer at him as he taps on. They can’t get out. If they could, the body he passed by earlier would probably be eaten, not charred, and the entire place would be a mess. Well, if they could move, of course. They would probably fuse into a very ineffective giant, being ingrown into the machines and all.

Lalli sees that most of the trolls and dead people’s countdowns aren’t active, for some reason. He stops, staring at them, and turns around, looking back at where he just walked through. His head tilted, he realizes that it’s actually all of the trolls and corpses that are deactivated.

Somebody’s been keeping watch.

Somebody’s been shutting down all the mutated beings.

Somebody is here.

Lalli immediately crouches, silent, motionless, and listens for any sign of life other than himself. It’s hard to tell over the humming of the machines, but the sound pulses, and he tries his best to hear in the pauses of lowered sound.

He doesn’t hear anything in particular. Sneaking along, he becomes mildly disturbed by the fact that if there was anybody here, he wouldn’t be able to hide. He can clearly see the top of the machines, and there’s no way he could get under one. They look like they’re part of the floor. He couldn’t get in one because the liquid would probably all spill out and he hasn’t seen too many unoccupied ones either.

A troll with more eyes than he can count in one glance bangs at the glass and Lalli hisses, hopping over to the opposite side of the hallway and pressing himself against another orb, before quickly going back to the center of the hallway because there was yet another troll where he was just leaning and tempting it really isn’t a good idea.

He crouches down quickly, looking around again to see that there isn’t anybody nearby, before getting down on all fours and crawling. There really aren’t any books here. This wasn’t a very good tactical decision. What kind of facility is this anyway? It’s not very comfortable, he’s cold, and he’s not very happy with crawling.

He decides to turn around, then realizes that he’s taken completely arbitrary paths before now. He has no idea where he is in the maze of corpses and unawakened, and there isn’t really all that much he can do about it. His abilities allow him to see the general direction of people and bodies, but the thing is, he’s surrounded by bodies. Even if he could find the specific form of Sigrun (or even Emil, he could deal with a couple slaps on the back if he could find his way out) there’s no guarantee there would be a logical path that he could follow to get to them. He takes quick stock of what he has on him. Two knives and a rifle.

He contemplates firing the rifle, but then that would really awaken everything in the area, and perhaps more than that.

He’s currently at a crossroads. There are four different alleys he could take. He hasn’t been paying enough attention to specific trolls for him to be able to identify the correct paths by going through and checking for a landmark. There is no easy way to get back to the base. He is, effectively, stranded in a strange, dangerous land.

Fantastic.

Lalli sighs and rolls over on the ground. He’ll decide what to do next in a little bit. Right now, he’s just incredibly tired after a long night of scouting (the idea to go here was not his, a fact he’s glad is true), and he feels like a good nap would help him focus better and maybe give him some insight on how to get back. Even though it’s bitterly cold he’s wearing a good coat and he could probably just put his hair over his face. He closes his eyes, trying to block out the constant drone of the machines, but then he realizes there’s something beeping rather urgently and nearby.

Normally, he would just let it fade into the background cacophony of inhuman sounds, but there’s also a faint aura connected to it that catches his attention.

Somebody’s waking up, and this time, it’s not a troll.

His eyes snap open and he springs into a fighting stance, automatically preparing for combat. He knows nothing about this person, but they might need his help or have some sort of information about the outside world. They could be the voice to bring the rest of the planet out of the silence.

He’s not sure if he wants to know.

Perhaps they won’t speak Finnish.

They probably won’t speak Finnish, he decides with a touch of relief. Closing his eyes again, he tries to feel out the presence, but it’s cloudy around him, the vibes of the awakened trolls and the dormant minds of the unawakened causing the equivalent of deafening background noise, but he somehow manages to pick it out and head toward it, unsheathing his knife and holding it in front of him as almost a dowsing rod. The runes engraved into it amplify his power and silence most of the other bodies around him, shutting out the trolls’ black speech from his mind. He moves through passages, stepping to the left, then the right, until his knife taps a glass orb and he knows he’s found them.

He opens his eyes again. The light is much brighter than he remembered and it hurts his eyes, making him squint.

He realizes it’s because there’s no bluish fluid left in the orb to dull it. It’s been drained. The dials to his left are going wild, spinning and flashing and generally not giving him much confidence in the whole system.

There’s no time left on the bottom timer. Some hand-like things are redressing the body that was presumably previously suspended and holding it in place. The mask is still on.

The hands finish. The mask retracts and the glass slides apart quickly, too quickly, and the left pane shatters. Glass gets everywhere and one piece stabs him in the arm. The person inside isn’t as lucky and gets multiple shards stuck in their arm. The mechanical hands retreat and a tan kid, younger than him and dressed in clothing like he’s never seen before, falls out. Their hair is an astonishing shade of pink.

Lalli catches them without thinking, stumbling backwards and accidentally dragging their right leg through the field of glass shards, and they’re bleeding and awake and yelling and Lalli has messed up. He can’t understand a word they’re saying, and they seem to be very, very agitated at him, not to mention wounded, but that’s not his main worry.

Lalli claps a hand over their mouth. The next time the sound dips for a second, he listens hard, and catches the dull thunk of metal being hit, broken.

They hear it too. Their already-big eyes are as large as the metal saws on the Dälahasten.

They’re clutching his arm, and he’s going to have yet another bruise, but there’s that sound again. It’s louder. Something is breaking the machines and whatever it is it’s getting closer.

They whisper something to him. Lalli looks uncomfortable and glances away, not sure what they said or how to respond in a method that would make them stop talking to him. He really should have just stayed with Emil.

There it is again, and again, and again, and again. He can hear it even when the sound is at its peak intensity. He shoves bleeding child behind him and brandishes his knife, backing up until they both have their backs against the wall.

The first thing he sees is a giant, malformed hand slam down on the top corner of the machine. A troll escaped? Why would it have escaped now? There’s no reason for it to have suddenly gotten out of the previously-unbreachable holding casks.

He raises his knife up as another hand slams into the edge, crumpling the metal beneath its grip. There are a series of light thumps behind the machine and then another, smaller, human hand grasps the side and pulls itself up.

A mass of wildly swirling hair is visible, and then the- troll? human?- thing flips it out of sight, and Lalli experiences a moment of complete and utter confusion. What on earth is happening. There’s a gorgeous lady (who looks very angry) but there should also be a malformed beast right there as well.

The little kid yells something like “whatha fack” and Lalli still has no idea what they’re saying, but he feels the sentiment, and soon joins them in that feeling when he sees the bony protrusions peppered all along the woman’s body.

The arms are actually a part of her. Dumb pink kid yells “NOPE”. Lalli still has no idea what they’re saying.

She makes eye contact with him, and immediately her face is transformed into a mask of rage. Her one visible eye crunches up, pupil shrinking and deforming, and Lalli suddenly realizes that he is hopelessly outclassed. He drops the knife. If he moves fast enough he could pull the rifle out and shoot it, but the dumb kid is clinging to him and yelling and he just hopes Sigrun can find him as soon as possible to take out this freak and look, she’s jumping down from the machine and lovely she broke the tile just by landing on it. Hm. He might be in a spot of trouble here.

The kid behind him is crying right in his ear as the troll approaches, smushing his collar down and probably getting blood and snot all over him. It gets within a foot of him, ghastly smile stretched across its face, and asks him a question.

He doesn’t speak that language, either.

Fantastic.


End file.
